How Does Firewall Protect Your Computer

If you have a computer at your home then you might have heard of the term firewall at least once. But most of the people who use computer just for their basic purpose may not be familiar with what a firewall is and how does a firewall protect your computer from any external threats and how important it is for the security of the system. So let’s discuss in detail about all these basic things related to firewall.

What is a Firewall?

A firewall is a software or a program or a piece of hardware that protects the computer or your network from any external threats like virus, malwares, hackers and cybercriminals and provides a secure environment. In other words it acts a security wall separating your computer from the outside world including the internet. Its primary function is to monitor the traffic that comes across your network or your computer and blocks those traffic that are harmful to the system and thereby controlling the data flow across the computer.

How does Firewall protect your computer?

The firewall provides protection to the computer or a network by monitoring the traffic or the data that flows across it. While doing this it allows only those data that are good and does not cause any problem to the system and discards all other data that it feels will be insecure to the system. This functionality of the firewall is enabled by a set of rules using which it decides whether or not to allow a particular data to flow through it.

The firewall makes use of Packet Filtering method to control the flow of data across a network. When you are connected to internet you will be constantly sending and receiving information or data in the form of small packets. The firewall examines all the packets that flows across it and filters out those that meet the set of rules that firewall uses and allow those packets alone to pass through it while blocking the rest which does not meet the requirements of the firewall.

Types of Firewall:

There are two types of firewall depending upon its need.

Software Firewall – It is a software which comes with almost each and every computer that you use and protects it from any threats that come outside of the computer.

Hardware Firewall – If you have more than one computer in your home or have a small network that connects a many computers then you must have a hardware firewall like a router in order to protect the entire network from getting attacked by any external threats.

Need to have a Firewall?

Many of us might want to know what is the need of a firewall or what happens if we don’t have one. Well if you don’t have one then the risk of your computer getting attacked or your confidential data being stolen is very high. Nowadays many of us are doing a lot of financial transactions online which are very vulnerable for being exploited by the hackers. So if we don’t have a firewall, then the hackers might easily enter our computer and stole all your confidential data like your credit card details and email passwords. So it is always important to have a strong firewall which is up to date.

How to turn on the firewall in windows?

Most of the windows operating system comes with a default firewall set up installed on it. While most of the times it is turned on, in some cases firewall might be turned off. If you are not aware of how to turn it on then follow the instructions below.

#1) Click the windows button in the bottom of the screen and type windows firewall in the search box. Then select the windows firewall option.

#2) Now the windows firewall screen is opened. Now click the Turn Windows Firewall on or off button on the side of the screen.

#3) Now you can check if firewall is on or you can do if it is not. Then click OK in the bottom of the screen. Now the firewall is turned on and it is ready to protect your computer.

While most of the computers have a firewall by default it is always recommended to have a good internet security suite installed on your PC. Most of the security suite have a firewall feature tied with them which is capable of protecting your system from any type of external attack even those threats which the windows firewall fails to detect.